Alongside his pals in Emeralds, guitarist Mark McGuire makes unhinged music-- a swirling drone that oscillates wildly back and forth and seems to spin off in every direction at once. The focus of his latest solo effort is narrower. Without the synths and electronic elements that intensify Emeralds' swelling noise, Living With Yourself is primarily a guitar record, looser and more accessible than we're used to from McGuire. It also has a clear narrative and conceptual theme: This is an album about youth and memory, family and nostalgia-- it's a deeply personal, even autobiographical work.
McGuire makes this pretty clear right off the bat: the cover art collages photos from his childhood, song titles evoke memory ("Clear the Cobwebs"), and the album is bookended with actual recordings from his youth. Nostalgia is a concept indie music has explored a lot lately, but usually not with this kind of specificity. These are his memories, his family, so as listeners we get this rare voyeuristic peek into an artist's history. Opening cut "The Vast Structure of Recollection" is literally music-as-flashback: It moves between samples from his past and big rushes of ambient noise-- like a memory, it's vivid, then hazy, then gone.
Apart from these samples and a bit of drumming, Living With Yourself is all guitar, and McGuire manages great variety from this one instrument. He loops and multi-tracks his own playing, creating a rich tapestry of ambient swell and electric noise. Standout "Brain Storm (For Erin)" is a good example of his talent for layering: It starts of kind of pointillist with intricate finger plucks, then brings on heavy drones that work as a chorus. The song really moves. Even shorter interludes like "Moving Apart" feature this interwoven quality. Here, McGuire sets out a layer of proggy, almost percussive notes then lets darker mechanical noise bubble up from underneath.
There's no easy genre signifier for this music (the umbrella "experimental" might be best), but ultimately it reminds me of some of my favorite ambient records. Like Gas or Eno, it's very easy to lose yourself in the wash of sound of this album, but it's not drifty or toothless-- there's plenty of color and emotion here too. McGuire also does a good job of laying out a clear arc and holding his listeners' attention. For every epic number like "Recollection", there's a shorter passage that dials back the intensity and lets you catch your breath. Thematically it's as strong an instrumental record as I've heard in a while, this weird glimpse at a stranger's photo album that in the end is surprisingly quite touching.
